Hamas War

Friday, December 5, 2008

How Can The Kids Learn Respect?

I grew up in America, in the 1950's, a very calm, optimistic, even boring time. It was pretty easy to teach us to respect authority, because in most places authority was benign.

Today's Israeli teens, especially those who try to follow the Torah, Jewish Law, see a very different government, military establishment.

Kids see things in black and white, and it looks very black.


The Israeli Government treats those who promote Jewish Rights in Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, as enemies.


The government and military use force they wouldn't dare use against Arabs. The Israeli Judicial isn't interested in promoting even equal rights for Jews.
How can the kids learn respect when the government treats them as enemies?
Refuah Shleimah
A complete recovery
police, border guards, soldiers
While Protecting Jewish Rights
To Live In Hebron!

4 comments:

Hadassa DeYoung said...

Shavua Tov!
The government doesn't deserve respect so we don't have to teach the youth to respect it. The way you have phrased the question it seems as if - and correct me if I'm wrong - in your opinion if the youth do not respect the government then they will not respect anyone else. Why would that be true?
A more important question is whom do the youth respect? Do the youth treat their parents with respect? Rabbis? Teachers? Do they treat with respect the total strangers with whom they come into contact?
The youth respect and obey the Tora. Men who have set man-made laws above G-d's law are very offended by that.
Hadassa

Batya said...

This lack of respect breeds cynicism, which can eat away at respect for Torah, especially since there are many rabbis they don't respect.
That's what worries me.

Hadassa DeYoung said...

Shalom, Batya!
Tell me, do you respect all rabbis? I don't. The question is how not to respect them. We must disrespect respectfully. It may sound like an oxymoron, but what I mean is that we should call the rabbis "rabbi", in most cases be polite but not follow the rabbis' erroneous teachings, and not apologize for it. The youth do have authority figures - rabbis and other teachers - guiding them. That's a big difference from truly rebellious teenagers. Do you that that's not enough to keep the kids on a decent path? I think that some amount of cynicism is going to be unavoidable until the government and army (not to mention a few settler "leaders") treat Jews as Jews and the enemy as the enemy.
JoeSettler has a good post on the mukata about the hill-top youth.
Hadassa

Batya said...

I certainly don't respect all rabbis. Rabbis are humans and we all make mistakes.
It saddens me that the age one realizes that adults are terribly fallible has fallen drastically.

re: rabbis Just a few minutes ago a neighbor sent a not to the Shiloh email list, excusing the fact that a certain rabbi hadn't recommended someone for the Likud Primaries, because "he didn't know the guy was running." The rabbi hadn't bothered fully checking the lists before giving his instructions. He had partial information, which is very dangerous.